Episode 287 – Audrey Niffenegger

“The success of The Time-Traveler’s Wife didn’t change me as an artist, it changed me as a person who was able to control her own time.”

In NYC for the Brooklyn Book Festival, author/artist Audrey Niffenegger joins the show to talk about her work and life. We get into her new collaboration, Bizarre Romance (Abrams), being Parent Trapped (maybe) by Hayley Campbell, her interest in taxidermy and what it does and doesn’t signify, how she shifts from prose to comics and vice versa, the allure of Chicago, getting consent to convert people into characters, writing the sequel to her best-known work, The Time Traveler’s Wife, how that book’s success changed her approach to art, how art school taught her to see, getting turned on to print-making as a teen by a book on Aubrey Beardsley, the books she’s still hoping to get around to reading, and plenty more! Give it a listen! And go buy Bizarre Romance!

“I have a pretty holistic idea of what a book is and what can be in a book.”

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Jesse Sheidlower’s apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on the same equipment at the Bethesda North Marriott during Small Press Expo weekend. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Ms. Niffenegger by me. It’s on my instagram.